The Move to Minimalsim

Minimalism is an art movement in which the artist wanted the viewer to acknowledge their works as what they were. They wanted the viewer to not have any connection with any personal past experience or training. Simply  the artists was to present there art as it is, without interpretation. This was a huge movement considering that art previously was often dissected with psychological techniques in order to determine the meaning, who the artist is, who the viewer is, the title, the sitter, and further analyses. Minimalism is the bare essential of art, it is what it is.

Donald Judd was a pioneer in the movement, especially with his work Untitled. Judd even incorporates the title, or lack there of, into the minimalist persona. By leaving the piece untitled it takes any attempt to relate the work to the title away from the viewer. The piece, Untitled, as seen to the right is of ten aluminum boxes lodged into the wall. And that is it. Or at least that is what Judd intended with his minimalism. However, that is not what critics and viewers found. The movement enraged the art realm for they felt it took away from the experience, so they began to break open Untitled. Lets experience typical analysis of the work: "Ten boxes, ten shiny golden boxes, symmetry, all lined up, lined up to look like a ladder, a ladder that is going where? gold, shiny, escalated higher and higher, God? This piece is in reference to religion." So as you can see, as long as there is some sort of stimuli, people will ponder its meaning and the effort put into it.

Psych breakdown:  It hardly our fault though. As humans we categorize any information we process into alike scenes, scenarios, or information. So when we contact new stimuli we experience what is known as the spreading activation theory. This entails schemas in our brains to become active and to start firing information of things relating to stimuli so that we can understand it and possibly add it to our schema. An example would be if I say think of a doctor, you more than like also thinking of things associated with a doctor such as, a nurse, hospital, surgical gloves, ect.

What does this mean for Donald Judd and the Minimalist movement? Well, for Donald Judd I'm sure it does not mean too much for he is the artist and he can dictate however he feels about his work. However, for the movement, it takes away the conceptual experience. The concept will be there (and we can acknowledge and learn about it), but as humans and our primitive categorizing brains, we will always try and find meaning in nothing.